The History of AR

Flip through the timeline below to discover major events in the history and development of Augmented Reality.
(for best results, view in Dipity.)

For additional information and references there is a text based version below.

on Dipity.

Despite its new age look Augmented Reality has been around since the 1950’s, under many different headings.

Going back to the 1950’s many computer scientists talked about human computer interaction, including Morton Heilig who developed ‘Sensorama’, an immersive, multi-sensory theatre experience. It wasn’t until Ivan Sutherland invented the head mounted display in 1966 that people could actually see a reality that involved human computer interaction. Of course Sutherland’s head mounted display allowed users to manipulate graphics in 3D. (Carmigniani et al., 2011)

In the 1970’s this technology became known as “Artificial Reality” (Zhao, 2009). Myron Kruger developed VIDEOPLACE, a room for human computer interaction at the University of Connecticut. Using information transmitted from a camera to a computer and then projected onto a screen, users can interact with the ‘artificial reality’ onscreen. (Nagler, 1994). Research and development around this new view on the real world continued for the next two decades, primarily in the military and NASA building applications for training pilots, astronauts and even infantry.

Though many ‘artificial reality’ innovations were piloted most did not get off the ground – until Zimmerman and Lanier introduced the Dataglove – a more user-friendly way to interact with the artificial environment. (Sturman & Zeltzer, 1994) Users could don the dataglove and use their dexterity to manipulate objects in the virtual world without an intermediary device like a joystick. Jaron Lanier also coined the term ‘Virtual Reality’ in 1989, and was the first to bring this technology to the public, selling ‘goggles and gloves’ as entry points to the virtual world. “Virtual reality (VR) produces a digital environment in which visual perception, sense of hearing, and sense of touch are highly similar to those of actual environment” (Zhao, 2009)

In 1990, The phrase “augmented reality” is attributed to Tom Caudell, who coined the term when, while working for Boeing. He designed a head-mounted digital display to help workers wiring aircraft by displaying a plane’s schematics on the factory floor. (Vaughan-Nichols, 2009).
This overlap is explained by Milgram’s continuum of real to virtual reality environments. Augmented reality applications can be placed as mixed reality on the continuum spectrum. (Milgram, 2006)

Ronald Azuma (1997) wrote an important report defining the field of Augmented reality and outlined the three main criteria for augmented reality – separating it from the artificial and virtual realities.

Azuma’s three criteria:
1) Combines real and virtual
2) Interactive in real time
3) Registered in 3-D

From this point on, the field exploded, by 2002 the first outdoor Augmented Reality Game “Quake” had been rolled out with the first ‘wearable computer’ (Thomas et al., 2002). Using a see through head mounted device, outdoor players can see targets or other objects overlapped on their actual surroundings.

(Azuma et al., 2001)

The Horizon Report 2005 listed Augmented Reality as a key emerging technology for the five-year time frame. They predicted that as the interface became easier to use, Augmented Reality would become common in education and training.
(New Media Consortium, 2005) By 2007, the regularity and popularity of smart phones provided the incentive to put Augmented Reality into the user’s hands.

By that time two main varieties of Augmented Reailty have been identified – maker based and location based. Location based Augmented Reality uses our cell phone’s GPS to determine our location and surroundings add a layer of information on top of what we are viewing with our camera and (Carmigniani et al, 2011, Billinghurst, 2011). Two major examples of this are Wikitude, released in 2008 and Layar, released in 2009. Both provide basic mobile applications.

In marker based augmented reality, our phone, tablet or laptop’s camera can recognize markers to provide us with information or 3D visuals. This is much more akin to the artificial and virtual realities that had been developed previously. New Zealand’s HITLab was the first to produce AR markers for print media, creating a marker that was printed in the newspaper as an advertisement for the Wellington Zoo. Once the viewers registered the marker with their cell phone’s camera, a 3D graphic of a zoo animal rose off the page. (Schmalstieg, Langlotz & Billinghurst, 2011)

As we look toward the future, augmented reality technology will get smaller and smaller, more mobile, more personal and even more social. The implications for having rich context from the virtual world in your hand, or in your line of vision just when you need it are far reaching – medicine, training, architecture, design fashion and beyond. They predict the future will have just about everything you need right at your fingertips, or even closer. (Carmigniani et al., 2011)

References:
Azuma, R., (1997) A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. 6(4), 355-385.

Azuma, R., Baillot, Y., Behringer, R., Feiner, S., Julier, S., & MacIntyre, B. (2001). Recent advances in augmented reality. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 21(6), 34-47. doi:10.1109/38.963459

Billinghurst, M (2011). The Future of Augmented Reality in Our Everyday Life. In Proceedings of the 19th International Display Workshops. Nagoya, Japan.

Carmigniani, J., Furht, B., Anisetti, M., Ceravolo, P., Damiani, E., & Ivkovic, M. (2011). Augmented reality technologies, systems and applications. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 51(1), 341-377. doi:10.1007/s11042-010-0660-6

New Media Consortium. (2005). The Horizon Report. National Learning Infrastructure Initiative. Stanford: McGraw Hill

Milgram, P. (2006) Some Human Factors Considerations for Designing Mixed Reality Interfaces. In Virtual Media for Military Applications (pp. KN1-1 – KN1-14). Meeting Proceedings RTO-MP-HFM-136, Keynote 1. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: RTO. Available from: http://www.rto.nato.int/abstracts.asp

Nagler, E., (1994). Two-dimensional reality courtesy of camera and computer: No headset, no mouse, no keyboard even -- videoplace does it all. New York Times (1857-Current File), pp. 605. Retrieved February 2, 2012, from ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2008). (Document ID: 116374743).

Schmalstieg, D., Langlotz, T., & Billinghurst, M. (2011). Augmented reality 2.0. In (pp. 13-37). Vienna: Springer Vienna. doi:10.1007/978-3-211-99178-7_2

Sturman, D.J., Zeltzer, D. (January 1994). "A survey of glove-based input". IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 14 (1): 30–39. doi:10.1109/38.250916

Thomas, B., Close, B., Donoghue, J., Squires, J., Bondi, P. D., & Piekarski, W. (2002). First person Indoor/Outdoor augmented reality application: ARQuake. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 6(1), 75-86. doi:10.1007/s007790200007

Vaughan-Nichols, S. J., & Vaughan-Nichols, S. J. (2009). Augmented reality: No longer a novelty? Computer, 42(12), 19-22. doi:10.1109/MC.2009.380

Zhao, Q. (2009). A survey on virtual reality. Science in China Series F: Information Sciences, 52(3), 348-400. doi:10.1007/s11432-009-0066-0